The year is 2116 and they still haven't found out a way to get us from going to school! We have so much advancements in technology but here we are watching the teacher put out notes on the noteboard as we watch them appear on a tablet in front of us. All of us are wearing the same clothing to keep us safe. The clothing is a bodysuit of all black with stripes of yellow circling the body. Still everyone is jealous of me and my twin, they think we are the best musicians because of our names. I see them scowl at us in the hallways and hear them saying our names at lunch. Being an artist or musician is all you can be these days like doing painting, drawing, musical instruments, and singing. Only the best of the best make money out of it. I play the guitar while Harmony, my twin, plays percussion. We both hate it, even when we tried to join art classes or singing, we disliked it immensely. We couldn't hit the right notes when singing and we failed at painting an abstract painting in art! To not upset our parents and the society we stayed playing our instruments even when we had different passions. All I wanted to do was write but that was shunned in our world. Today in class we were learning about extinct jobs that are no longer used in today's society. I was excited, maybe they would talk about writing and not just music.
"Okay class the first job we will learn about is a writer!" our teacher says and pulls and chunky old-fashioned book from her desk. I smile.
"Writer's made these books and wrote everything their is to read today, they became extinct around the time of the music and art revolution" she says robotically, "They strung together words to make sentences that make little sense like a type of writing called Poetry where you write random words that sound pretty together". I press a green button on my tablet, the teacher then looks over at me. Her robotic face stares at me. She shows no expression, but she waits for me to answer. Being kind is in every teaching robots memory drive.
"Writing seems like an interesting profession, but why did it become extinct?" I ask.
"Because their was no use for it anymore because we got technology that can make just as an interesting novel as a writer can" the teacher replies and goes onto telling us about computer sciences.
"The computer sciences aren't yet extinct but to make all these computers, tablets, and robots like me, we need one person that is a computer scientist" she says.
I looked over to my sister, she seemed very interested in about the computer sciences. Her eyes were wide and was smiling very oddly. She always did seemed like the inventive type to me. She loves to create things, that's not art, and even bought a old fashioned tool kit without our parents permission so she could see what was inside our oven-fridge that made the food. After our parents found out, they scolded her and told her to practice playing percussion instead of tinkering with old artifacts. She was very sad that night and told me she wouldn't stop tinkering if it means she is happy. Her face was droopy and was red with anger. All I want is for us to be happy. Well that and the world to go back to when their was writers and computer scientists everywhere so we could fit in. I guess we were born in the wrong time period. Then the flying bus comes to the door of our classroom and we sit down in our seats so it can take us home.
"Our parents will never let us do what we want to do" Harmony whines. Then she grins, like she remembered something amazing.
"Did you find the antique notebook and pencils from Peregrine's old-fashioned shop?" she asks me.
I almost forgot I brang it with me! I reach into my iron fiber bag and pull out a antique notebook and pencil. As I take it out I feel the rough callus of the pencil and notebook rub against my hand.
"Wow! That's so cool! Write something Melody!" she says as soon as I take it out.
I open the papery notebook to a page covered in lines. I pick up the pencil and touch it to the paper, then I write, I love this old-fashioned stuff, in between the lines. The writing is sloppy and messy, they never taught us how to write at school, they only taught us how to read and play music or do art. Harmony looks at what I wrote, mesmerized.
"That is so cool!" Harmony says and grins.
She would have hugged me then because of the excitement, but the rules state we aren't aloud to do anything affectionate in a public setting. "Next stop, the willow's family house" we hear a robotic voice says from the ceiling. In no more than a millisecond it was our stop. We jumped out of the bus and into our house. Our dad was in the living room playing his Trumpet, while my mom stands next to him and playing the cello. Our house was bland and had few furniture, the only thing that covered the walls was posters. Our mother looks over at us as she plays and smiles at us. We smile back at her.
Their was a time everyday where you had you practice music or art after school, this was that time. We pressed a blue button on the side of the wall and after a second the wall opened to reveal our practice room. It was a small room, not much in it but a drum kit, guitar, and stands plus a wall full of sheet music. We know that we will get ridiculed by the state if we don't play so we sigh and walk into the room. We put our bags down near the door and go to our instruments. We both were average at playing them because we have to be in order to pass the tests at school. We both played at the same time so we could listen to each other and get the rhythm of the song because without each other playing, we would be a train wreck. So we both played our favorite song, it was called Ride, as a practicing song, but no one knew the author's name was because it was an old song. It was all the way from 2016, so it was pretty old. It had lyrics and everything and we both sang along to it with our terrible singing voices. Then an idea popped into my head, if I want to be a writer, maybe I could write songs? As we played the last notes, I told Harmony of my idea.
"No you can't write you're own song! Everyone will know you wrote it and we will be done for! They will find out about what we do and we will get ridiculed!" she says. I shake my head.
"You can keep on playing that sheet music but I am going to write a song, and you will love it!" I say.
She shakes her head at me and then goes through her warm-ups on her drum kit. I run over to my bag and pull out the notebook and pencil. Then I sit on the floor next to my guitar and think of some lyrics or at least notes for the song. Then I thought of the first words of the song within a minute of thinking. After that I kept on writing and writing, idea's clogged my brain as I wrote word after word. My handwriting was sloppy but at least it was something. I sang little bits and pieces of it under my breath.
"You can be anything you want to, I can be anything I want to......." I hum.
Harmony glared at me but I could tell she supported my decision. She did always want to make computers and robots one day which was against everything our society believed in. She hit her drums and played almost all of the songs we had in the room.
I smiled at my song after a half hour of writing it. I finally finished the lyrics and notes for my guitar! I don't even glance up when I heard the wall door swing open. I was so engrossed in my song to notice my mother looking at me. I was too busy to notice the horror on her face as I hummed the tune under my breath. Harmony didn't notice the approaching mother and even if she did, she didn't warn me.
"Melody!?!?" I hear my mom yell, "What is that in your hands? What song was that you were humming? Why aren't you practicing your guitar?"
"I am writing my own song! I want to write! I love writing! Let me be myself!" I say back to her harshly.
We never go into fights like this but I was ready to defend my passion. She looks fed up with me and is shaking her head. Harmony starts to play a boss battle song on her drums and I almost laughed, almost.
"Melody Willow! What have I taught you about writing your own work! You can't do it! We already have all the songs we need and more are getting written by the bots every day so you can't write a song Melody! You can't" Mother rants.
I look at my pages full of notes and lyrics for the song. Then I look at my mother and her red face. I can do this. I can do this.
"Melody, I can't believe you Melody! We have to stick to the rules Melody! If we don't stick to rules, you know how angry the state gets at us!" Mother rants again.
I don't hang my head in shame or in sorrow. Instead I look up at her with anger in my eyes and fire in my heart.
"Well if the government doesn't like it, I don't care! I am only me! I can't change who I am mother! I'll go to the cot room and write!" I shout.
Then with my head held high, I push open the wall door with all my strength and walked to the cot room. No one would ever walk in their house to another room, they would they would take the wall door to other places in the house. I storm across the tracks and run to the cot room. We aren't aloud to do anything in the cot room but sleep, we weren't even allowed to get dressed or have anything in here but pillows and blankets. So when I stormed out of the room and told them I would write it in here, I was breaking all the rules. There was no going back. So I went into the cot room and sat down on my cot. I then preceded to whistle the tune of my song. I knew I was breaking most of the rules of the government that I knew, but I didn't care. This is who I truly am, a writer, I can't change that! Soon enough the doors opened. I didn't look up untill I heard a robotic voice.
"You're under arrest for breaking codes number 21, 1738, 1876, and 552!" a police officer yells and grabs the notebook and pen out of my hands and rips it to shreds. Then he shines a light in my eyes. I suddenly fall to the floor, I was paralyzed literally and figuratively. The police officer stood over me with his robotic body and voice.
"You can't be what you want to be in this city, you can only be what you are made to be, laws are laws Melody Willow and no one can break them"